Soil tests in Germany reveal no evidence of 'Hitler's Atom Bomb'

Soil tests in Germany have revealed no evidence whatever that Adolf Hitler tested a nuclear weapon just two months before losing the Second World War, government scientists said Wednesday.

A Berlin historian, Rainer Karlsch, published a book last year on Nazi nuclear research and offered circumstantial evidence that the Germans may have tested a bomb on March 3, 1945 at the Ohrdruf army training camp in central Germany.

The site, near Gotha, is currently used by the German armed forces. Germany's main nuclear-research agency, the PTB, based in the northern city of Braunschweig, conducted soil tests there at the expense of German public television channel ZDF.

A statement Wednesday said radioactive material was found at the site, but this could be explained by the fallout all over Europe from the 1986 explosion of a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, Ukraine.